Almost every Canadian family has a dog or a cat. A quarter of supermarket shelves are used to display food for those pets. There is a very wide choice of all kinds of brands because, like humans, pets are very picky.

It has been said that all the starving people in the world could be fed from year to year if dogs and cats disappeared from North America. But the inhabitants of this continent are true animal lovers and there would be a veritable revolution if such a deconstruction were implemented. Besides, the average North American would no longer know how to fill the pauses in their conversation — people talk about pets as if they were people!

Every year I am invited to the Christmas party of the church choir of which I am conductor. I always resolve to steer the discussions towards music, but I rarely succeed. The Dutch talk about cows and calves, because it is in their blood to elaborate on those animals. But there aren’t that many pastures in Canada, and so Canadians prefer to talk about dogs and cats. My choir members can talk for hours about their sweet little pets.

You get ‘punch’ at these cozy Christmas parties. I suspect that, years ago when many church members joined the Temperance League, ‘punch’ then came into vogue. After all, one had to drink something ‘festive’ during parties! Nowadays, people throw a few or many shots of clear alcohol into the punch – depending on whether they are liberal or orthodox Christians. This does make conversations a bit easier.

I am a moderate drinker. Beer makes me throw up and whisky makes me cough like crazy. When I drink wine, I start talking less and less, which is stupidly annoying for someone who is already on the taciturn side. I have tried ‘rum and coke’, but even then, I feel a peculiar languor rising within me that makes me more and more quiet.

But the ‘punch’ was tasty! It was getting warmer in the vicar’s spacious living room, so I drank a little too much of that liquid. As I became more and more languid, I began to suspect that there were many splashes of alcohol in the punch. I got the idea that the vicar wanted to make it a ‘very’ cozy evening

The punch had a different effect on the lady choir members. Their talk got more and more busy. Mostly, they talked about their dear housemates. One might call it gossip if those housemates had been people. But I was out of my element, because I have only one housemate and that’s my wife. We have had dogs and cats, but they kept getting killed.

I didn’t mind at all that I couldn’t join in the conversation — I was in a fog. Through fluttering eyelids, I could see the ladies hovering in sight around me, and every once in a while the upright shadow of the vicar loomed into view as he kindly and very obligingly brought me Christmas biscuits and Christmas cakes and Christmas punch.

I was slumped lazily in my chair when Wimpy came up to me. I had already learned that Wimpy barked the whole town out to their windows if the postman took even two steps into the yard. Wimpy was a fox terrier who became a fox terrier quite early on. Wimpy had to go to a dog home when his ‘Daddy’ and ”Mammy’ (really, that’s what she said) spent the winter in Florida.

But Mammy had been terribly shocked when they finally picked up their dear Wimpy again. His otherwise mischievously gorgeous eyes were rimmed red, and the rheumatism in his left leg had gotten so bad that he dragged himself pathetically around the house. Never again would they take Wimpy to that dog home. Fortunately, the vet was able to do something and Wimpy was now back to his old self. He had even bitten the postman’s trousers again and was back to doing his little errands very sweetly on the guest room carpet, where no one ever slept anyway.

But now Mammy and Daddy were going to Florida again! Could any of the partygoers look after their little doggie?  For just three months! Dead silence! To salvage the situation, since no one else was making suggestions, I said I would talk to my wife about it. Wimpy’s Mammy asked if I had had a dog before.  I sat up a bit in my chair and told them that I was actually very afraid of dogs. I saw then, suddenly and with razor-sharp clarity, that they could not imagine such a thing.

Well, I did! I told them I was bitten by a rejected police dog in Holland as a child. To convince them I pulled up my left pant leg under which was hidden that hideous scar. People started staring at me reproachfully, and I could see in their eyes that Canadian dogs would never do such a thing! A soprano fortunately rescued me from this predicament by starting to talk about her bulldog Lansdown.

Then the vicar’s little Pekinese started rubbing against my legs. I almost kicked her away but thought the better of it just in time. How about I take that mutt on my lap, I thought! That would surely move the ladies to tears. The Vicar’s wife, catching sight of my suddenly warm disposition, whispered that Lizzy would love to sit on my lap. Since none of my choir members were called Lizzy, I assumed that was what the mutt was called. Lizzy nestled against my belly, and very tenderly I started stroking her fur. But madam intervened — I had to whisper sweet words into her ears.

When I did this, Lizzy evidently began to love me dearly because she raised her front paw for me to shake and then peed benevolently all over my trousers, which I had recently put under the iron for the occasion of the party. Nonplussed, I moved the little dog to my left knee and quickly threw some punch over the wet spot so that I would not embarrass anyone. The lady next to me quickly jumped up to fetch a cloth from the kitchen. Little did she know she was rubbing punch and pee.

The vicar’s wife knew by fine intuition that her little Pekinese was due for another errand and, despite my feigned protestations, cheerfully took the animal off my lap. The revelers were by now sharing the merits of different types of cat food and, since they had now surely understood that I was a true animal lover, they also asked for my opinion. I could only tell them that our late cat loved thick Dutch pea soup and liked to lick up the sprinkles that rolled off my children’s sandwiches onto the kitchen linoleum.

As I drove home, I was exhausted and discouraged. So much, would I have liked to get to know the families of my choir members. I would have liked to get to know them better too. I could have told them something about my rich experiences as a conductor and organist in other churches, and of course I would have liked to brag a bit about my own offspring. But no, dogs and cats filled the evening.           

Driving carefully, I kept seeing their silhouettes on the road ahead and repeatedly had to swerve around them. After I’d saved another big tomcat from his inevitable death, a red light appeared through my back window. That had never happened before! But then I heard the nasty wail of a police car siren, and I knew I was in for it. I imagined that punch might not register if I had to blow into one of those little test devices. But of course, again, I wasn’t sure. I rolled down the window and a face like that of a bulldog made me stiffen like a tomcat on its nightly prowl.

When the officer shone his huge torch on my driving licence, he started a low growl. At first, I thought he was terribly angry, but soon I got the idea that this was his way of laughing. “So!” he said, “So you are that nice organist my wife, who sings in your church choir, is always talking about. Lucky for me, I’m on duty tonight, otherwise I would have been stuck with that Christmas party too. Last year I had to go, but they did nothing but talk about dogs and cats — hockey and baseball didn’t even come up!”

I whispered, meow! He growled, woof!

“Drive on, dear friend, but please stay on the right side of the white line.”

That’s how I got home – now wide awake from the effort of keeping the nose of the car exactly in the middle of my lane. I lay down on the sofa for a while to watch a late movie. And that’s where my wife found me the next morning.